Steam for Linux

If you have Steam on windows you have a icon in the taskbar. I was wondering if that is a bug or if that isn't implemented within the linux version but on my archlinux with xcfe desktop I have no tray icon.

I think this is because of how Ubuntu-centric development has been thus far. Unity uses a dock-like model, where taskbar entries are not distinguished from systemtray entries. (Systray was the word you were looking for, not taskbar.)

I have this problem on KDE and Fluxbox. I haven't tested it on anything else, but I would expect it to be present for XFCE, legacy versions of Gnome, Cinnamon, etc.

i'd say valve went through the hussel and wrote an applet for the unity panel (or whatever fancy name canonical calls it). that works realy well in unity, but not at all in other panels. the right choices would have been the freedesktop systray. every panel should have (most of them do) a systray applet.

Mint 14 (Ubuntu 12.10) running GNOME Shell, no icon in the message tray area, but hitting the close window button minimizes the client and it can be re-opened from the overview, Alt+Tab, or, since I'm also using Avant Window Navigator, I can bring it up from there too. It would be nice to see a systray/message tray/whatever icon for all desktops though.